Two videos linking the Cold War to dysfunction in the “West”

Two videos I consider worth watching where the speakers explain their viewpoints on dysfunction in the “West”.

Despite these two videos being made about 40 years apart, both speakers appear to approach the dysfunction and malaise in “Western” countries from the perspective of a fighting the Cold War (or the contemporary Great Power rivalries). In the 1980s, Yuri Bezmenov (or “Tomas Schuman”) gave a number of interviews and lectures claiming to be a Soviet KGB defector and sharing his insight into propaganda, psychological warfare, and subversion tactics. In 2023, Professor Doug Stokes is interviewed on the Triggernometry channel and speaks about issues in universities, postmodernist thinking, culture wars, and Great Power competition.

Although he was likely too young when the Soviet Union collapsed, I suspect that Doug Stokes has been mentored by Cold War strategic and tactical thinkers over his career. Doug Stokes also focuses on the postmodernist ideologies within contemporary universities and how they are now impacting British (and Anglosphere) culture.

Further reading: Doug Stokes’ Substack newsletter

Both Yuri Bezmenov and Doug Stokes appear to approach the issues mainly from the perspective that dysfunction, demoralisation, and decadence in the “West” (USA and allies) will undermine the Western bloc’s capabilities to compete at a strategic level with rival “Great Powers” (USSR and now Russia, China, and other rising powers).

Dismantling Dystopia is approaching many of the same issues from a somewhat different perspective. Civilisations which cultivate a contempt for reality are going to make catastrophically bad decisions. People and societies are being damaged by those decisions. Great Power rivalries and strategies are also in the ‘beyond my control’ category for most of us. Dismantling Dystopia instead focuses more on the tactical level of ‘what is being done to our societies’ , ‘how is it being done’, ‘what we can do about it’ and ‘how can we be more effective at resisting the manipulations and transformations being imposed on our societies’. If the tactics are inherently anti-truth and anti-human, then they need to be resisted. This resistance is regardless of which Powers are deploying them to manipulate us and destroy (or “transform”) our societies.

Title: Yuri Bezmenov: Psychological Warfare Subversion & Control of Western Society

Release: Various, reported to be a recording of a 1983 lecture.

Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnpCqsXE8g

Runtime: 63 minutes

Video Description:

“Yuri Bezmenov (alias Tomas Schuman), a Soviet KGB defector, explains in detail his scheme for the KGB process of subversion and takeover of target societies at a lecture in Los Angeles, 1983.

Yuri Bezmenov was a former KGB propagandist who was assigned to New Dehli, India - and defected to the West in 1970.

Bezmenov explains his background, some of his training, and exactly how Soviet propaganda is spread in other countries in order to subvert their teachers, politicians, and other policy makers to a mindset receptive to the Soviet ideology.

He also explains in detail the goal of Soviet propaganda as total subversion of another country and the four-step formula for achieving this goal.

He recalls the details of how he escaped India, defected to the West, and settled in Montreal as an announcer for the CBC.

Note the segments starting at around 14 and 24 minutes into the video.

Please mirror this video! Thank you.”

Title: The West’s Struggle With Reality

Release: 23^rd of October 2023

Made by: Triggernometry

Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8TppXqq634

Runtime: 66 minutes

Video Description:

“Doug Stokes is Senior Advisor to the Legatum Institute and Professor in International Security and Strategy in the Department of Politics at the University of Exeter. He has published a number of books and articles on US foreign policy, grand strategy and world order, the latest of which is 'Against Decolonisation: Campus Culture Wars and the Decline of the West' available here: https://amzn.eu/d/602bJDk” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8TppXqq634

After watching both videos you could consider some of these interpretations and scenarios:

1. The Soviet Union is playing dead as part of an ambitious long-term strategy. Once Western nations have been sufficiently weakened by subversion and decadence, the USSR will reemerge and conquer most of the world.

2. Western nations are being subverted from within over decades as preparation for a Maoist-style cultural revolution which will attempt to implement some sort of communism across the Anglosphere (James Lindsay of New Discourses is prominent in voicing concern regarding this type of scenario).

3. Slow-acting and contagious weapons of mass cultural destruction were launched during the Cold War (by one or many sides). These ideological weapons (self-replicating, psychological warfare programs) have gone rampant and are still weakening the Anglosphere countries (culturally, intellectually, and institutionally) many decades later.

4. Post-scarcity luxury, complacently, and decadence have been feeding the uncoordinated emergence of these postmodernist ideologies. These ideologies just happen to be damaging societies in similar ways to what Yuri Bezmenov was describing.

5. Other groups and Powers are deliberately using propaganda, psychological warfare, demoralisation, and subversion tactics similar to those used by the Soviets.

6. Nothing to worry about. Postmodernism is good and you are misinterpreting it anyway. Everything is fine.

Dismantling Dystopia approaches approach all six of these interpretations/scenarios with both scepticism and open-mindedness. Interpretations/scenarios 1 and 6 appear unlikely given observations of the current situation. Interpretation/scenario 2 is complicated by the enthusiasm with which Western corporations, Western governments, and capitalist oligarchs (as well as their foundations and charities) have been promoting “Woke” and other postmodernist agendas. The other three interpretations/scenarios are worth considering and are not mutually exclusive.